MySpace sued for $30m after assault on 14-year-old

A Texas woman has filed a $30m lawsuit against MySpace.com after her 14-year-old daughter was sexually assaulted by someone she met through the site.

The suit alleges that MySpace does not do enough to protect its under-age users, according to a report in the Austin American Statesman, and includes news reports of other sexual assaults that took place after people met on the MySpace network.

The lawyer representing the family, Adam Loewy, told the newspaper: "MySpace is more concerned about making money than protecting children online."

"We feel that one per cent of that is the bare minimum, that they should compensate the girl for their failure to protect her online when they knew sexual predators were on that site," he said.

He argues that none of the registration information the site requires needs to be true, and nothing is done to verify a user's age.

MySpace.com's chief security officer Hemanshu Nigam issued a statement saying: "We take aggressive measures to protect our members. We encourage everyone on the internet to engage in smart web practices and have open family dialogue about how to apply offline lessons in the online world." ®